I admit it! I thought I knew what coaching was all about, but as soon as I’d embarked on the training course to become accredited, I realised I hadn’t really had a clue.
I hadn’t understood, for example, that coaching is not about dishing out advice or giving people the ‘benefit’ of my opinion. Rather, it is all about helping the client find solutions within themselves by listening and asking questions with empathy and curiosity, without judgement or bias.
I didn’t really know how it differed from talking therapies in being more forward-focussed, and with a particular goal in mind and usually for a set number of sessions, rather than taking a deep, open-ended dive into the past.
I hadn’t realised the power of silence and space for reflection, a space where magical things can happen if you just let them. I have to admit, before I watched some coaching demonstrations, I was a bit sceptical about how a process that involved no advice, no opinions and ‘just’ listening and asking some well-judged questions could possibly help someone move forward with their life… but you know what, it really does!
Maybe that’s because in our everyday lives our friends and family tell us what they think we want to hear, or move the conversation onto what happened to them in a similar situation. Or perhaps they don’t have the time to really hear you out, or they fail to understand your concerns and leave you feeling unheard or even dismissed. Sometimes, just taking the time to unburden yourself and talk things through with an appropriately trained coach really can work wonders, not only because of what is said but also through the unique power of the space and the relationship.
And beyond all that, coaches have an array of tools at their disposal to help you tease out what might be missing from your life, work through a longstanding issue, stay focussed on specific targets, help you break old habits and establish new ones, discover and reflect on your relationship style and how it could serve you better, and so much more besides.
So if this has been an eye-opener for you too and sparked some curiosity about whether coaching could help you, why not take the next step and arrange a free call so we can find out more about each other and whether coaching could be the right choice for you.
